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THE RELIGIOUS USES OF 
MEMORY 



THE RELIGIOUS 
USES OF MEMORY 



A SERMON 

BY 



The Rev. S. PARKES CADMAN, D.D. 

I The Central Congregations 
Brooklyn, New York City 



Pastor of The Central Congregational Church 




THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 






COPYRIGHT, 1912 
BY LUTHER H. CABY 



THB-PLIMPTON-PRBSS 

[ W • D • O ] 
NORWOOD»MASS»U«S«A 



4 r: a. {(I 1 . »: 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF 
MEMORY 



And thou slialt remember all the icmj 
which Jehovah thy God hath led thee. 



The Book of Deuteronomy 
eighth chapter, second verse 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF 
MEMORY 

npHE book of Deuteronomy is a not- 
-* able example of the religious uses 
of memory. It was written during a 
crisis in the history of the Hebrews, and 
it is the first serious attempt at a phi- 
losophy of that history. The text is at 
once a statement of its theme and a 
summary of its main content. It is em- 
phatically the book of remembrance. 

Under the guidance and protection 
of Jehovah, Moses had led the chosen 
race out of the house of bondage to 
the verge of the land of their adoption. 
A disorganized band of fugitives had 
been transformed into a consolidated 
people. Their wanderings and priva- 
tions in the wilderness had imparted 
a stern but salutary discipline to these 
spiritless helots. The former slaves of 
Egypt became the conquerors of 
Canaan. Despite the fierce resistance 
of surrounding tribes, they established 
themselves in a land of fertility and 
beauty, and their heroical story was 
transmitted to posterity. 

7 



8 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 

God's purposes in this emancipation 
and nationalizing of a despised and 
abject race were infinitely larger than 
even the Hebrews conceived them to 
be. He had covenanted with their 
father Abraham that in his seed should 
all the nations of the earth be blessed. 
From this believing ancestor, whose 
faith was reckoned onto him for right- 
eousness, there sprang that illustrious 
line of law-givers, psalmists, and proph- 
ets; men who have illuminated man- 
kind with the radiance of their spiritual 
visions. The religious instinct of the 
race was to find its highest expression 
in Israel as a peculiar people, and in its 
theocracy as the holy commonwealth. 

These purposes were enshrined in 
the Deuteronomic code. But side by 
side with them is an unsparing portrayal 
of the repeated apostacies of the 
Israelites. Their disobedience and 
disloyalty, their stubbornness and con- 
tinual backsliding are set over against 
the signal deliverances which Jehovah 
had wrought in their behalf. And the 
punishments which follow these trans- 
gressions are depicted with fearful 
severity. 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 9 

The book, like an angel standing 
in the path, solemnly adjures this 
stiff-necked and self-willed race to re- 
call the numberless experiences of the 
past. It would warn them against the 
perilous indifference toward God wor- 
ship and duty engendered by prosper- 
ity. It beseeches them to turn from 
every distraction of the present and seek 
the Author of their blessings in the light 
of their consecrated remembrance. 

Yet not alone for these ancient 
tribes, but for all time, and for all 
people was the message of Deuter- 
onomy given. Whether the book be 
ideal or actual, whatever sources He 
behind it, its moral purport remains 
the same. It offers the wisest and 
loftiest remonstrance against every 
God-forgetting age. It speaks to the 
very heart of those who are so disas- 
trously preoccupied that, without any 
studied purpose, they steadily drift 
away from the center of attachment. 
Neither history nor the passing hour 
have divine meaning for them. Faith 
grows dim, hope dwindles, love waxes 
cold, every moral susceptibility is 
deadened. Then on the listless ears 



10 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 

of these aliens the command of this 
Scripture peals forth like a midnight 
warning bell— THOU SHALT RE- 
MEMBER— and whether they hear 
or forbear, obey or reject, rest assured 
that ere the last hour of conscious 
memory departs, remember they must. 

The faculty of retrospect is one of 
the highest employments of the mem- 
ory, and the memory is the superior 
attribute of the mind. All principles 
of projected efficiency largely depend 
upon experience. The statesman en- 
deavors to guide his country's affairs in 
the light of what has been. The judge 
is governed by the precedents of human 
justice. These vocations have seldom, 
if ever, been successfully followed except 
by those who saw that the roots of the 
present lie deep in the past. We are 
indebted to the men and women who 
have wisely handled our yester- 
days in behalf of our tomorrows. 
Whatever may be urged against the 
retrospective attitude, it faces the maj- 
esty of facts; the purely prospective 
attitude peers uncertainly into the 
fortuitous and the fanciful. 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 11 

The modern era has been so well 
furnished on many sides, so full of 
progress, so distinguished for exciting 
discoveries, so pregnant with new possi- 
bilities, that certain thinkers are in- 
clined to neglect those eras which 
went before it. They insist that these 
possibilities will not be realized until 
we have freed ourselves from the fetters 
of antiquity. Our convictions must 
not be allied to the revelations of the 
Law and the Prophets; they must be 
imbedded in our present knowledge of 
God, of Christianity, and of the virtues. 

Their insistence is reasonable within 
proper limits, but they sometimes for- 
get that healthy revolt against the 
tyranny of dead shibboleths is one 
thing: rebellion against ageless and 
fundamental verities is quite another. 
Those verities are as closely related to 
present excellence and well-doing as are 
the strata of the earth to its fauna and 
flora. Should we attempt such an in- 
surrection, a non-progressive infancy 
would penalize our folly. It cuts us 
off from the supply, it separates faith 
from the career of faith, it divorces us 
from the accumulated spiritualities 



12 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 

which enrich history. The living 
streams that flow through contempo- 
rary civilization are fed from the great 
ranges behind them, where Christ 
stands supreme. Their fountains are 
in the historical personalities and sig- 
nificant movements which are at least 
comparable with anything we know 
today. 

Ours is the age of distributed genius, 
and we have not at this moment the 
intellectual equal of Plato, nor of Soc- 
rates. There is no man in the present 
church who can reveal the heart of God 
as could the great prophets of Jewry 
or the apostles of Christianity. In the 
cycles of time, there have been alter- 
nations of twilight and night, dawn and 
day; periods when the Kingdom of 
God came with power, and others when 
it seemed to linger. Spiritual evolu- 
tion has had its stages of vigorous 
growth, followed by those of apparent 
lassitude, and these again have been 
superseded by overwhelming outbursts 
of regenerative vitality. We must ever 
return to these resources, we must con- 
stantly ponder them, and we must not 
allow the dominant hour to obstruct 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 13 

our vision of a mighty and a gracious 
history. "Thou shalt remember all the 
way which Jehovah thy God hath led 
thee/ 5 

The aims of many reformers are 
nothing if not radical. They flout 
either the past or the present, more 
generally the former, and for their one 
grape would the whole vine destroy. 
They neglect the empire for the sake 
of a particular province, and because of 
this contraction of interest often injure 
the cause they seek to serve. No phase 
of history can be thus ignored; from its 
first dawn to its last occurrence it is 
inseparably associated with all we strive 
to be and to do. The planting and 
training of the Christian church, the 
growth and inter-relation of every part 
of the social structure, and our own 
individual career, should come within 
the scope of retrospect. 

In the patience of God, these organ- 
izations have endured the countless 
changes of the flight of time, and a 
millenial extension is but a day in his 
sight. In the purpose of God, they will 
fulfil their meaning at the propitious 
moment, and this so quickly that a na- 



14 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 

tion shall be born in a day, and the day 
shall perfect the work of a thousand 
years. We strengthen them and we 
fortify ourselves when we call to mind 
the former times. We cease to be 
weary in well-doing, we kindle anew 
our zeal for righteousness, we increase 
our reverence for law and literature and 
philanthropy, when we name those 
great spirits who have been an epitome 
of mankind, such as Wesley, Wash- 
ington, Marshall, Milton, and John 
Howard. It is remembrance which 
enables us to do this, it ministers to 
our profoundest feelings, to our char- 
acter, and to our affections. It places 
religion in its rightful seat of authority, 
and on either side it enthrones virtue 
and wisdom. 

Over all it sheds the halo of its 
purity and mellowing influences. We 
seldom see men or measures clearly 
until, in its interval, we have gained 
the correct perspective. We do not 
love with tenderness and beauty divine 
unless remembrance and imagination 
blend their enchantments with our 
affection. The expansion of faith de- 
pends upon these inward powers of 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 15 

apprehension. By means of retrospect 
we discover the ways of God toward 
men, and how that he has been a very 
present help in every time of trouble, 
the abundant Giver of all human good. 
The rule of right, the sovereign quality 
of mercy, the requirements of moral 
perfection, and the beauty of holiness, 
are no chance occupants of our epoch 
or of any other. They are found wher- 
ever the universal Spirit has evoked 
the aspirations of the race, they have 
their habitation in all the conditions of 
the past, they have reigned in the race 
always and everywhere, and no subject 
mind has escaped their control. 

The interpretation of the text shows 
that the memory to which it refers is 
also a personal function. It exhorts us 
to remember our own way, the direct 
dealings of God with our individual 
life, and how these have instructed, 
chastened, and humbled us, and dis- 
covered our inner self, and whether or 
no, in motive and in deed, we would 
obey the divine commandment. 

For memory is distinctively a con- 
scious agent, which testifies to the re- 



16 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 

ality and permanence of our own exis- 
tence. It is at once the condition and 
the proof of our self -identity. It brings 
before us the sense of that vast living, 
loving, moving, inspiring Spirit who 
dwells in every soul and makes it the 
audience-chamber of the Eternal. 

Were memory withdrawn, every 
mind would be a blank, retaining 
nothing except momentary sensations 
which, like the foam-flecks on the wave, 
are lost as soon as found. Thought 
feeds on reflection, reflection fastens 
on experience, experience is reproduced 
by remembrance, and progress depends 
on every link in the chain. How neces- 
sary, then, is this wonderful gift of 
God for all spiritual enlightenment! 

Every personal event leaves some 
ingredients behind; it passes, but these 
are retained. The retention may be 
unconscious, and one of the strangest 
aspects of this endowment is its facility 
for reviving in unexpected ways and 
places the occurrences we supposed 
were forgotten. In an unprepared 
hour, the far-off is instantaneously 
brought nigh, our former deeds troop 
in unannounced, faded scenes and 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 17 

dreamland faces flash forth again with 
startling vividness. We renew our in- 
tercourse with the departed, and with 
those delightful prospects to which 
distance lends additional charm. We 
hear once more the beloved voices 
which have lost the accent of pain and 
the tremulousness of fear. For though 
we have a glorious fellowship of saints 
on earth, some of the noblest tokens of 
our communion do not proceed from 
our visible intercourse. They emerge 
again from the fruitful years that men 
miscall dead, and in the joy and bless- 
ing of such reveries, we understand 
how beneficent it is that part of the 
past in all the present lives. 

St. Augustine, reflecting on these 
truths, exclaimed, "I came at last to 
the fields and courts of memory, where 
are treasures of unnumbered impres- 
sions on every hand. There I met all 
I had discovered by the senses, the 
heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that 
in them is. There also I found God, 
and there I found myself, and what I 
had been and done, and when and 
where and in what way. 55 

" There also I found God." Such is 



18 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 

the chief reward of those who explore 
"the fields and courts of memory," as 
did the great Bishop of Hippo. They 
are full of the evidences of the Supreme 
Mind, and of the Supreme Memory. 
So actually involved is the Deity in 
man that, great as is the universe be- 
yond us, the universe within is almost 
greater. Buried in what Arthur Hal- 
lam so finely called "the abysmal 
depths of personality M are our own 
inviolable experiences of grace and of 
guidance. There abide our secret life, 
our indisturbable peace, and our hope, 
both sure and steadfast, of immortality 
to come. The deeper we sink the shafts 
of meditation into these hidden springs, 
the more abundantly will their healing 
currents flow. 

Every life is divinely planned and 
sustained, and when we search out the 
ways of God in this respect, we increase 
our present confidence and strengthen 
our hold on the future. A gracious 
Power, not ourselves, has defended us, 
a superior Wisdom has gently cleared 
our path. We have been saved from 
our own follies and sinfulness. Our 
sorrows have been healing ministries 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 19 

for good. Our afflictions have re- 
deemed us from pride and corruption. 
We have been brought forth with a 
pillar of cloud by day and of fire by 
night. The veil that hid tomorrow 
from our eyes has been gradually lifted 
to their prepared sight. The eater has 
been forced to give us meat, and the 
destroyer to yield us sweetness. Those 
things which we imagined were against 
us have issued to our advantages. The 
Heavenly Father has devised means 
whereby his banished children be not 
driven from him. He 'has provided 
for remedial effects even in our trans- 
gressions, and where sin did abound 
grace has much more abounded. 
Crowning all, eternal love has diffused 
its warmth and light upon our darkest 
passages and dispelled the shadows of 
the dreariest night. 

This is a social consciousness of God, 
in which all believers can rejoice to- 
gether. It inspires the exultant strain 
of praise, the "endless Alleluia" of the 
worshiping church. It is the cause of 
that tranquillity which enables us to 
rest in the Lord and wait patiently 
for him. When health departs, or 



20 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 

friends are few, in his omnipotence we 
are strong, resolute, girded for the fray. 
Remembering these things, we glow 
with grateful adoration, and burn with 
desire for the fullness of the vision of 
God; for the satisfaction of those who 
awake in his likeness. 

The text does not deal with the 
Christian conception of God as our 
Father, but those who have been the 
recipients of his unfolding self -manifes- 
tation know that, while he is the Je- 
hovah of the Hebrews, he is also the 
All- Wise and All-Loving Parent who 
has sent forth the Lord Jesus as the 
revelation of his nature. And for our 
apprehension of Christ, it is necessary 
that he should not only be known as a 
present and living reality, but that 
this knowledge should be supplemented 
by the historical portraiture of the 
Gospels. Here memory again plays 
its important part. Those records 
were written in the light of a loving 
and stimulated remembrance. This 
remembrance was at Christ's own solici- 
tation, and he instituted the Memorial 
Feast on the night of his Passion in 
order that his work and his purposes 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 21 

should be lodged in the breasts of the 
disciples. Those who truly love Jesus 
will likewise remember Jesus; they 
will keep in mind the things in which 
they have been instructed. They, too, 
can follow him from the arms of Mary 
and the hillside at Nazareth, through 
all the scenes of ceaseless ministry and 
complete abandonment to the Eternal 
Will, until they bow before that dra- 
matic concentration of all his service, his 
submission, his obedience — the cross. 

This scriptural injunction stipulates 
what we shall remember and to what 
ends. It takes shape from its sur- 
roundings, and it is meant to conserve 
that view of life which is transfused 
with the sense of God's overruling 
providence. Apart from this conser- 
vation there is no purpose discernible 
either in the world or in man. The 
forty years in the wilderness were a 
proof that God intended the elected 
nation to be his instrument. They 
were also an assurance to everyone who 
participated in them that their strong 
Deliverer had kept his covenant. This 
assurance has lain behind the making 



22 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 

of hosts of men and of many nations: 
not only Israel, but the democracies 
that now govern the world have arisen 
to their magnitude because of their 
faith in Jehovah's guiding hand. 

There is no provision in the Deu- 
teronomic code for those temperamen- 
tal tendencies which discolor memory 
and usurp its religious uses. It is a 
serious thing to thus interfere with the 
important processes we are describing. 
Yet how many have hidden away from 
God because of the melancholy, the 
unavailing grief, and the bitter leaven 
of uncontrolled recollections. 

Some project across their reflections 
a wistful pensiveness which dims the 
horizon of approaching age. They feel 
their strength decrease, the limbs grow 
stiffer, each movement less exact, each 
nerve more loosely strung. And they 
contrast this debility with the vigor 
and the buoyancy of youth. For them 
there is no sunset glow, softened and 
serene, a golden day's decline which re- 
flects its effulgence even on the eastern 
skies. With the added tale of years and 
physical infirmity, they have lost the 
compensation of those whose rapt pro- 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 23 

phetic eyes see the world as from a 
height, and with a heart profoundly 
stirred prepare to chant their Nunc 
Dimittis. 

Others violate the spirit of this 
Scripture by vindictively accusing 
their own generation. Nothing is more 
useless or demoralizing, but they per- 
sist in it and mourn the evil times on 
which they have fallen. God has for- 
saken his world. The complex scheme 
of life is but a jumble of fatalistic rem- 
nants. They brood over this confusion 
and invoke memory in the interests of 
their jaundice, scanning the past 
through a distorted medium. One can- 
not deny that they have some useful- 
ness : they frequently act as a sobering 
influence upon a nation like our own 
and restrain its reckless optimisms. 
But, when this is said, it still remains 
that more frequently they take out of 
life the faith and hope which life must 
have. Matthew Arnold has voiced 
their sentiments in many of his poems 
and in none so sadly as in The Grand 
Chartreuse — 

" Our fathers water'd with their tears 
This sea of time whereon we sail, 



24 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 

Their voices were in all men's ears 
Who passed within their puissant hail. 
Still the same ocean round us raves 
But we stand mute and watch the waves/' 

Yet nothing is more sure than is God's 
oversight of all the varied elements of 
life. Our times are in his hands, the 
reactionary as well as the progressive 
periods, the days of doubt as well as 
the days of faith; and if we find it 
hard to rejoice and easy to mourn, let 
us not forget that he pours the old 
wine and the new, the bitter and the 
sweet, into the chalice of life, and that 
when he has filled the cup, the draught 
gives health and power. 

Still others sink down into a hopeless 
apathy where faith is an exploded 
dream. The widest scope of effort 
cannot touch the regions of eternal 
change and mystery. The end finds 
men with all their unsolved problems 
and unsatisfied yearnings and vain 
desires, inheritors of nothing save 

"The vasty hall of death." 

Such reminiscences conduct those who 
indulge them to the vaults of despair. 
They are crippled in spirit by their 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 25 

pagan use of memory's powers; their im- 
agination is an evil genius, it dwarfs their 
character and hampers their service. 

It was Carlyle's ill-fate that though 
he could remember God with reverence 
he could scarcely tolerate men. He 
trusted in the Jehovah of his Calvin- 
istic fathers, but with a few exceptions, 
and these not always wisely chosen, he 
despised the divine image in his fellow 
creatures. He expatiated at length 
upon their monstrous errors and follies. 
He surmised these would prevail in the 
future as heretofore, and he found what 
he believed to be sufficient proof to 
support his disheartening conclusions. 
Yet his immense knowledge of the past 
should have taught Carlyle that, how- 
ever undeserving, the human family in 
its solidarity is the offspring of God and 
the heir of his promises. But an un- 
purged memory reacted upon him and 
he spent his last days crying and curs- 
ing in the wilderness. 

It becomes us to act worthily as the 
sons of God, and to assume from all 
our knowledge of his ways toward us 
in the past that he will not allow us to 
be defeated. We shall yet slay the 



26 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 

beasts that ravage us. Whatever our 
past errors and omissions and wicked- 
ness, we have the privilege to solicit 
and receive God's forgiveness for them: 
then we should wisely forget them. 
The things which are behind us may 
shed the light of experience upon the 
pathway we must tread; but when 
they are simply weights and hindrances 
we are to cast them aside. Let us run 
with patience the race that is set be- 
fore us, looking unto him who is both 
Author and Finisher of our faith, and 
set free for utmost effort by a proper 
use of retrospect. Then even the se- 
verest visitations may chasten, but 
they cannot abolish our joy, nor take 
from us the lawful striving which shall 
at last be crowned. 

The text may seem to have no appli- 
cation for those whose youth has 
known no history, but while they re- 
joice in their new-born freedom, if they 
would remove sorrow from their hearts 
and put away evil from their flesh, they 
must remember now their Creator be- 
fore the cheerless prospects of a morally 
destitute age afflict them. 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 27 

We return at sunset to eat of the 
fruit of our own way and to be filled 
with our own devices. This return is 
accomplished by an automatic mem- 
ory which operates independently of 
our wishes. In that recurrence of 
youthful recollections, happy is the 
man who can say of his juvenile period, 
as said the sun-dial which Hazlitt saw 
in Italy: "I make record of only the 
sunny hours." And happier still is the 
man who has obeyed the w r ords of 
counsel and encouragement which at- 
tended his manhood's dawn. He who 
has received the large and seasonable 
gifts of the outer world, who has heard 
the men and women themselves who 
were behind the things that made them 
known, who has profited by their ex- 
ample, will bask in the sunshine of his 
later day. He will remain alive to the 
great sights and sounds and to the 
tender influences of the seasons. In 
his intercourse with men he will pre- 
serve the sanity and the charity which 
should be the distinctive virtues of 
maturity. If in him love's purifica- 
tion was early made, he may dwell 
upon its sweet memories to the very 



28 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 

end, and all his hours will be filled with 
beauty and with praise. 

What is more destitute or pitiable 
than a mumbling senility filled with the 
blackness of darkness and the pangs of 
the second death. Godless memories 
crowd in upon it, the lies it has loved 
come home to roost. There is no holi- 
ness, no reverence, no faith, no hope, 
in that last state. It is the natural 
sequence of a life whose formative 
period was spent in prodigality. Would 
you avoid this dreadful ending? Then 
pack your reminiscent powers with the 
thoughts and deeds that well become 
a son of God. So when your allotted 
time draws near its close, you will not 
be all frozen up within and quite the 
phantom of your former self. You can 
retire to the kingdom of the mind and 
challenge the approaching night. For 
in the spirit's chamber is the quiet 
sanctuary of many fragrant recollec- 
tions. Such age is never-withering 
youth, beneficent, exemplary, vibrant 
with the presence of the Creator whom 
you remembered in the days of your 
youth. 

There is a selective memory which is 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 29 

determined by your moral preferences. 
These strike the backward path across 
the teeming fields of recollection. The 
philosopher retains to the last his rea- 
soning processes, the saint his holy 
days, the mother the hour when her 
first-born lay upon her breast. When 
all else departs the ruling passions 
linger. The veteran sunk in decay 
hears his famous captain's name, and 
at the sound leaps to his feet, erect and 
military, and cries with a resonant 
voice, "For Waterloo and the Duke!" 
Then the sporadic flame dies down and 
leaves him in his dotage. Memory 
touched him and the dead revived. 

But watch as we may the selective 
tendencies of memory, it has an invol- 
untary ethical recollection whose mo- 
tions escape our scrutiny. If men 
could control these they would lay the 
ghosts, but conscience employs them 
without regard to our pleasures or our 
pains. "Oh! Full of scorpions is my 
breast, sweet wife," moaned the guilty 
Macbeth and his guilty spouse could not 
console him. This ethical memory is 
an avenger of unconfessed sin. Its chilly 
reminders, its stinging retorts, its unre- 



30 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 

mitting tortures, are the stuff out of 
which masters like Poe and Ibsen have 
woven their tragedies; and when such 
memories finally come to judgment the 
secrets of all hearts are bared, the doors 
of concealed horrors are opened wide, 
the burnt embers are refired. 

Is there no Gospel for such a woeful 
state? The modern fatalism would 
scarcely allow that there is. But in 
the provisions of God's fatherly love, 
there must be a complete oblivion 
where men can finally forget; and if 
our hearts condemn us for saying this, 
then "God is greater than our hearts, 
and knoweth all things." A regener- 
ated memory, relieved of its burdens, 
alive to the noble and the pure, is as 
great a need as a regenerated heart. 

The great Florentine was aware of 
this. That mediaeval theology of 
which he was the master, and which 
we too little know, was, in some re- 
spects, more humane than our own. 
Dante tells us that in the last circle of 
the Purgatorio there flow two rivers 
which take all blame and remorse out 
of the alienated will. The candidates 
for paradise must drink of these ere 



THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 31 

they can enter into its passionless re- 
nown. The first is the river of Lethe, 
which is the river of forgetfulness. 
When they partake of its healing 
stream their iniquities are fully par- 
doned, their warfare is ended. They 
emerge from it, separated from the evils 
that have beset them, possessors of a 
peace that passeth understanding. 

The second river is the one of which 
Beatrice speaks: 

"Some more pressing care, 
That oft the memory 'reaves, perchance hath 

made 
His mind's eye dark. But lo, where Eunoe 

flows! 
Lead thither; and, as thou are wont, revive 
His fainting virtue." 

Here all foretastes of approaching bliss 
are given and the candidates are made 
ready for the Mount of Light. 

This is more than the dream of an 
inspired imagination; it is the poetical 
setting of a gracious truth. Even in 
this life our sins and sorrows lessen, 
our hot and fevered memories cool. 
The ameliorating drift of time brings 
with it many silent gradual changes 
for the better. We merge from dark- 



32 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 

ness into dawn, the prophecy of greater 
light to come. While still on pilgrim- 
age, we can humbly pray, "Remember 
not past years." The Divine response 
is, "I will cast thy sins behind my 
back, to be remembered against thee 
no more forever." Our shame is swal- 
lowed up in the bottomless abyss of 
love, while new delights await us from 
him who has said," I will restore unto 
thee the dew of thy youth." 

Thrice blessed is the man who lives 
the first life well. lie can accompany 
his petition for grace and consolation 
with the record of a purified heart and 
a will which has been made obedient to 
the higher powers, he has remembered 
all the way Jehovah has led him; he 
awaits the word that he may enter 
into the fullness of joy and sit down 
with Christ on his throne. 



THE END 



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